Things Worth Seeing
It is a mystery why the rotation for holding the G8 summits once again gave to Japan the honor and the pleasure to receive on its land the new Russian president. Deep in their hearts, Japanese are incurable optimists. They truly believe that all troubles in the world happen because of mutual misunderstanding, that one cannot help loving their country, and we cannot help agreeing with their arguments. We just have to listen with our hearts open.
There will be very high demand for the new, young, and free of old dogmas and stereotypes (as they think) Russian leader. He will be received everywhere with that touching Japanese warmth which indeed leaves hardly anyone indifferent. They will make a gift of a bear’s head artfully cut out of wood -- a signature product of local folk craft; they will say pleasant words, and will omit the unpleasant ones. And they will live in hope again. The opportunity should be seized: it is necessary to visit everyone: Ainu people, Hakodate, and Nemuro.
On the way back, it would be good to stop at the South Kurils. To land, if lucky enough, on Burevestnik airdrome (the Iturup island) once built by Japan exclusively for kamikaze’s takeoff. To wait for ebb tide and get over by land to a local sanatorium. There, to marvel at the no-one-knows-from-where-it-came tradition to take off shoes by the entrance to the sanatorium’s building, which isn’t small. Then, to helicopter over to the Shikotan island. When approaching the island, to look at the rusty skeleton of “Dzerzhinsky” destroyer abandoned at the coast, in which the Soviet delegation set out in 1945 to accept Japan’s capitulation. On the island itself, it would be interesting to visit a fish factory, Japanese-built it seems, that stamps canned saury amidst the abundance of calico salmon and salmon. At the Kunashir island, it is worth seeing an old Japanese warehouse of army boots, all left-foot ones (right-foot boots were kept separately from left-foot ones, to prevent theft). There seems to be no other evidence of civilization on the islands.
It is a long way from the Kurils to Moscow. There will be enough time to think about the mysterious issue which has been aggravating Russia’s relations with Japan for years. To think about successful political careers built by our and their professional ‘patriots’ in the struggle against the issue’s mutually acceptable settlement. About tens of millions of sincere and good people poisoned by their waste products. About hideous ruin and distress of the unlucky islands, which stopped being Japanese in 1945 and have never become Russian, apparently. About several generations of diplomats working for their entire lives for the sake of continuing a sort of medieval border dispute. At last, about the fathomless ruin in minds, preventing us from getting into the core of the issue and understanding what our own interests are.
An important note here: all that should be done not because one cannot help loving Japan once he saw it. And not because we cannot help agreeing to Japan’s arguments.
Georgy Kunadze, leading research assistant of the World Economy and Foreign Relations Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Russia’s deputy foreign minister between 1991 and 1994.
All the Article in Russian as of Apr. 03, 2008
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